Insider Information Archives - Page 18 of 20

INFOGRAPHIC: Mother’s Day Is the Biggest Brunch Day of the Year

Mother’s Day is one of the busiest days of the year for restaurants. To help prepare for the holiday, we asked our data team to pull some of the most significant stats around the holiday. Did you know Mother’s Day is the biggest day for group dining and for brunch?

We looked at all of the behaviors that affect planning and service: when people book reservations, where they’re dying to go, and what restaurants should expect for turn times (people tend to linger longer when they’re celebrating Mom). We even looked at how Mother’s Day Sunday affects the rest of the weekend and found a spike in bookings for the Saturday before, too.

Wondering which restaurants are guests’ top picks? We looked at OpenTable search data to see which tables were in the highest demand across top U.S. cities. We also found that Mother’s Day bookings significantly outperform those on Father’s Day.

Read on for tips to optimize your reservation books for the big day, and remember, it’s not too late for OpenTable customers to sign up for our Mother’s Day promo! Click here to enroll now.

Ingredients of a New Brand: Behind the Scenes of the OpenTable Rebrand

At OpenTable, the restaurants we work with are our biggest inspirations — from their hospitality and energy to they way they delight diners, night after night. It was time for our brand to reflect our passion for what can happen around the restaurant table.

In March we revealed a new OpenTable logo, color palette, voice and type — and most importantly, a new brand story that celebrates the memorable moments and experiences that a restaurant brings to life. Our team created this video to highlight the experiences that give us purpose and bring joy to our work.

“The old OpenTable brand wasn’t ever clearly defined; there was no clear brand promise other than providing restaurant reservations, which was entirely transactional with our users,” says Kate VandenBerghe, OpenTable’s Lead Brand Experience Designer, who led us through the rebrand. “Within OpenTable, we’ve been doing some great work over the past few years to define who we are and where we want to go: We’re building new experiences to enhance the dining experience, and we’re innovating in the restaurant space. But we hadn’t taken the opportunity to signal this shift to people outside of OpenTable.”

The team started out by figuring out what makes OpenTable unique: our internal culture, our products, our audience. Then came the process of exploring, defining, and refining. We explored areas such as illustrations, ads, emails and other digital touch points and experimented with new treatments. At the same time, we started standardizing the existing brand as much as we could — people within the company began to use a single typeface for communication.

We’ve updated and refined almost every one of our core experiences, but updating the brand was different. The brand is not a single touch point, like an app. It’s an expression of the company, people and promise of what we aim to achieve. When done right, it impacts almost every aspect of the service that we offer to our customers.

As restaurant owners and operators, you understand better than anyone the power of branding and how all of these details can change the way guests perceive and interact with you. So now that you know the “why,” we want to share the “how” behind the new OpenTable: how our new visuals, design and tone reflect our love of restaurants and dining.

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How to Optimize Your Reservation Books for Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day is one of the biggest dining days of the year — and it’s just a little over a month away. Start planning now by opening your books and setting your systems up for success.

The first thing you should do is sign up for our Mother’s Day promo, which allows your restaurant to show up in searches related to holiday dining; gives you exposure on our dedicated Mother’s Day landing page; and promotes your restaurant to diners via email. Restaurants that take part in promos see a 38% lift in seated diners — and it’s totally free.

Here are a few tips to consider so you can make the most of the holiday:

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22 Awesome Things We Learned at the Cherry Bombe Jubilee

On Sunday we attended the Cherry Bombe Jubilee, a gathering of women in various aspects of the food world — chefs, writers and entrepreneurs, to name a few. The day was packed with inspiring panels, presentations, and conversations with the likes of Ina Garten and April Broomfield, exploring topics such as effective leadership, social impact, and modernist cooking.

Here are 22 takeaways from an exciting, thought-provoking day celebrating women in food:

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5 Eye-Opening Stats For Restaurant Groups

Last week I attended the 20^th annual MURTEC Conference in Las Vegas, where operators from almost 200 multi-unit restaurant groups and chains assembled to compare notes, talk solutions and discuss key trends.

As with all good conferences, there were some pretty interesting statistics sprinkled throughout the presentations. I’m sharing a few here that I think reflect top-of-mind topics for the audience.

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